Do Not Touch Sensitive Areas, Say Activists
Even as a controversy has been hotting up over
BMC's proposal to use No-Development Zones (NDZ) for affordable housing, city
planners said the civic body has already marked roads and other amenities for
these zones.
The BMC, which is in the final stage of drafting
the Development Control Regulations (DCR) 2034 for the Development Plan (DP),
has said that the area which it has proposed to open up for affordable housing
has been well planned. An FSI of 4 has been proposed for affordable housing in
the DP -a provision which had not been made in the earlier DP . The planners
say that they have been very careful, especially as they do not want those
living in the affordable homes to be deprived of municipal services or any
other amenities.
In the DP 2034, the BMC has proposed to create 1
million affordable homes over the next 20 years on NDZ, Tourism Development
Area (TDA), salt pan, Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT) and Mhada plots.
According to the DP 1991, there were 13,706.32
hectares of NDZ land, of which 10,351.59 hectares are transferred to `natural
areas' which planners said is ecologically sensitive land and will not be
touched.
Of the remaining 3,354.73 hecatres NDZ land, 658.35
hectares includes existing gaothans, slums, industries and ro ads. Of the
balance 2,696.38 hectares of NDZ land, 2,100 hectares are proposed for
affordable housing on which the civic body has marked amenities and roads.
Chembur resident Rajkumar Sharma said it suits BMC
well to propose NDZ land for affordable housing. “BMC knew well that proposing
such land parcels for anything other than affordable housing would mean a lot
more resistance.BMC needs to know it is play ing with nature by doing this and
there is no coming back once we use these areas for construction. Sad that
while we're reviewing an open space policy and taking back plots from private
parties, we're using no development zones and salt plans for construction.“
Activist Shyama Kulkarni from Bandra questioned the
need to mark municipal roads.“Why are they using NDZ and salt pan land? It will
only burden the existing infrastructure.“
Credit : Richa Pinto
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